Better Man
by Clarice Waters
Summary: The Kommandant thinking, then coming to a decision. Alludes to non-con but doesn't cover the actual act.


This is something I wrote really quickly a couple of days ago after watching Schindler's list. It's not very good, but I've been on a dry streek as far as writting is concerned so I figured I should post something. Hope you like it.

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If I were a better man in the 'before the war' sense of the word I'd turn around. I'd walk back to my room, undress and retire.

No. If I were a better man in the 'before the war' sense of the word I wouldn't be standing here at all.

But then again if I were a better man in the 'before the war' sense of the word, when violence against all women was abhorrent, not just all women but Jewish women. If I were a better man in that sense, I wouldn't have beat her in the first place.

I hit her, I pushed a shelf over her and rained down broken glass. I mark her with me, the only safe way I can. I change her as she has changed me, and I wonder if she can tell. As my bruises bloom across her skin like screaming Van Gogh flowers in Monet spring, can she tell that it's not only my hate that she is wearing?

I remember all of it. Every single second I've spent with her. Every accidental brush and heavy hit. Every covert breath of her, every shouted word. I recall her skin hours before. Smooth alabaster angel marred only by me.

I wanted to touch her. I wanted to push up that chemise and explore her trembling form, explore my scars on her. Push my nose against her barely there belly and breathe. She does not smell of vermin.

I cannot think like this. She is Jewish and she is filth. In the light of day I know it.

In the light of day I can hate her. In the light of day I hate her for all the right reasons. A pretence, when others are near to see, that I now only mostly believe.

But at night I dream. And she is mine. At night I watch her openly and she does not shy. I watch as she goes about her duties as my maid. Or duties as my wife. Others I touch her as I see fit and she is willing and smiling and... not Jewish. Or Jewish at a time when no one cared. Until I wake sweating and hard and disgusted and yearning, and that is why I really hate her. For making me crazy. For making herself _human_ in my mind instead of _Jew_. I wonder If she can tell that too?

Does she know? That I pound my desperation into my blond haired, blue eyed, politically correct girlfriend, and shoot my disgust into the filth below. But not disgust with her, no. As innocent and warm and beautiful as she is. Does she know that my personal armory has never had such a work out as it has since her arrival?

I don't think so. She would attempt to bargain if she did. She would risk my ire and offer herself, her body, for the lives of the others. For she is good at heart and in soul, despite the Jew blood that runs through her veins. She is not like them.

And if I accepted? Acceptance would see me hung for sure. Or shot perhaps. Should they decide me, my demise worth less than the bother and the rope.

I cannot sleep. I know better than to try on the nights I've touched (hit) her. I've followed my thoughts to the cellar stairs and here I stand. All is silent. Perhaps I've killed her. I both care and don't in equal parts.

Perhaps it's not a matter of goodness but a matter of strength. A stronger man would not be standing here, so ready to take what isn't being offered. But then again a stronger man would be repulsed at the thought of touching a Jew in anything but malice.

We are alone in the villa tonight. No witnesses should she talk. Though I don't think she would.

She is close, so close to me now. The stairs creak under my wait and her body begins to shake. She lives! She has crawled to her make-shift cott and flinches as I reach forward.

She is soft and smooth in a way I never had a chance to feel or notice in my violence. Even my bruises have failed to roughen her and god knows I have tried. To spoil her, to mangle whatever it is inside her that glowed and grasped my thoughts and refused to let go.

My head drops into the crook of her neck and finally I can breath her as I wish. She is everything I've ever dreamed of her and that knowledge, It seems, is the straw. I've gone too far. I howl. A strange, wounded sound of surrender into her goosepimpled flesh.

It _is_ a matter of strength. And I have none left. Not in this. She has ruined me.

I gather her close and stand, the cott will not bear us both. She is afraid. Smart girl. She knows she cannot stop me, and she is bright enough to recognise that there would be no point in a struggle.

She emits a strangled sought of sob as my bed comes into view. Like an animal that knows it is near death. And perhaps it is a death of soughts, I am about to take the last thing she had left of herself that was still hers.

Her eyes shine with the newest of unshed tears as I set her to stand and remove her chemise. I will not stop.

She has damned me with her existence. But If I am damned then she is also. For I will not go to hell if I go without her, and where else would possibly accept her once tainted by me?


End file.
